Guest Blogger...Cara Putnam
Your Worth as a Mom
We all know the verse about a woman’s worth being far beyond rubies, but I have to admit that there are days that I wonder.
I mean, after cleaning toilets, wiping noses and making another uninspired meal, it can be hard to feel truly valuable. What kind of contribution am I really making to society? Now, I wouldn’t choose to invest the time in raising my kids if I didn’t know it matters, but I ran across something yesterday that really quantifies it. And as an attorney, I like evidence. Lots of it.
Similac (the formula maker) is running a contest right now to give some lucky mother $135,000…the amount salary.com says is the median worth of a mother. Not bad.
So I popped over. There’s a salary calculator that allows you to plug in how you spend your time and your zip code to land on a salary for your part of the country. I had a little too much fun this afternoon plugging in different numbers to figure out what my contribution was. The local median for where I live in Indiana is $127,667. Sounds good to me.
Then I plugged in hours. As a home-schooling mom, I spend more time than the average on day-care (for lack of a better term in the survey). By the time I adjusted the calculation for that and my writing, it pulled up to $148,593.
I can’t find my value in a salary that is as elusive as anything I can think of. But it does help to know there is value in all the little things I do that seem to suck up the time in my days.
And it’s a great argument for why I need more life insurance.
We all know the verse about a woman’s worth being far beyond rubies, but I have to admit that there are days that I wonder.
I mean, after cleaning toilets, wiping noses and making another uninspired meal, it can be hard to feel truly valuable. What kind of contribution am I really making to society? Now, I wouldn’t choose to invest the time in raising my kids if I didn’t know it matters, but I ran across something yesterday that really quantifies it. And as an attorney, I like evidence. Lots of it.
Similac (the formula maker) is running a contest right now to give some lucky mother $135,000…the amount salary.com says is the median worth of a mother. Not bad.
So I popped over. There’s a salary calculator that allows you to plug in how you spend your time and your zip code to land on a salary for your part of the country. I had a little too much fun this afternoon plugging in different numbers to figure out what my contribution was. The local median for where I live in Indiana is $127,667. Sounds good to me.
Then I plugged in hours. As a home-schooling mom, I spend more time than the average on day-care (for lack of a better term in the survey). By the time I adjusted the calculation for that and my writing, it pulled up to $148,593.
I can’t find my value in a salary that is as elusive as anything I can think of. But it does help to know there is value in all the little things I do that seem to suck up the time in my days.
And it’s a great argument for why I need more life insurance.
posted by Tricia Goyer @ 3:34 PM
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